My parents will be in town on Monday! I've been busy trying to plan a PG-rated schedule for the week which will involve a lot of beaches and Brendan Fraser movies and me keeping silent about anything to do with either politics or religion. I haven't seen them in a year and am quite excited, but smart enough to know that I must carefully choreograph everything in order to avoid such disasters as happened last summer. Ie, I will not go to church with them, or randomly start smoking again, or initiate arguments about either Goethe or Christian dogma. Also no drinking or stories about gay and/or promiscuous friends.
Mum asked if I wanted them to bring anything for me. I said Pan Chin Fu. But naturally my redneck brothers have already seen to her fate.
My God! The lack of cigarettes ... So weird: the headache and morning-fatigue are GONE; suddenly I am a normal energetic gal who can actually walk to the bus-stop in the morning without feeling cancerous and hung-over, when having engaged in NO cancerous OR hung-over activities the night before, and yet still I miss it ... My dad is 62 and quit smoking about 30 years ago, and tells me he still gets cravings when exposed to the smell of certain brands. Why couldn't I have been European? Focused on the War instead of the fucking Players Light commercials?? The Marlborough Man is dead! He died! And if someone offered me one right now I'd take it, and be like, "My fiance was never an Air Force martyr; I'm sorry but I'm so much shallower than you," and then I'd probably be a single mother and a drinker of canned beer, to boot.
Fuck. Matt and I just watched Jim Jarmusch’s "Stranger Than Paradise;" were amazed and inspired and humbled, then watched our own "You Are Here" and compared directing styles. I fear egotistical breakdown. Though really. There's something about black-and-white genius that encourages pilgrimages. Maybe? All I know is Moosehead has affected my memory. I couldn't remember the symbolism of Eva's coat. And I still have 2 left.
Friday afternoon at work I absently said, "I just want to sit on a beach tonight," and by 10pm there were over a dozen of us on the Dallas Rd. Beach rocks, drinking and smoking (though not me - I did not smoke ONCE) and singing and telling stories. The moon was a dark orange crescent and "set" at about 11 - felt a little like Armageddon to me, but nothing bad happened.
On Saturday Matt and I were mall tourists! I avoid malls except for the liquor store and the washrooms, but we went through almost every inch of Hillside Shopping Centre, mocking the advertisements and drinking juice boxes on couch displays and buying a crimson bed sheet. Bumped into our landlord at Zellers, just as I was pointing at a patio umbrella and shouting, "Doesn't it look OBVIOUS?" Walked through a pet store and felt sick; so did Matt - every day I'm a vegetarian I get more sensitive about animal rights, and it was horrible to see the conditions the rabbits, fish, lizards, etc. were forced to live in while all these dumb consumers walked around thinking it was "cute."
Two weeks of astronomical mood swings, stupid stress, paranoia, drunken outbursts and tears in washrooms. It's over now, I think. Some chemical in my brain lowered itself a little and another one raised; and so I dip from depressive back to manic. Though not really manic at the moment; more energetic and emotionally stable and optimistic.
By the way - tell me if this wouldn't arouse great stress even in a calm person: you go to a walk-in clinic thinking/knowing you have a minor vaginal infection, probably yeast, and the doctor tells you that if HERPES develops you should come in for treatment right away.
"What?" I shouted, flat on my back, legs in stirrups. "Do you think that's what it is?"
"Of course not," said the doctor. "It's very rare. I'm just SAYING, like just in CASE, to watch for the next 24 hours."
Oh, my God. This after I told her I was monogomous. (sp?) Anyhow, needless to say it is NOT herpes, and I had a sleepless night on Wednesday for nothing.
Thursday night was fabo, though. My last shift at the call centre, followed by dinner with Matt at La Fiesta Cafe where the teenaged staff was so hopelessly rude we couldn't even get upset, just laugh (my debit card was THROWN onto the counter by a bubble-gum blowing cook, among other things). Then "Bread and Tulips" with gin and wine, and we pulled the mattress out onto the patio and drank, debated, made out, and slept under the stars.
Yoga and writing and poker and red wine. I must write a self-help book!
Two poems, written at the Semi-Louise jam space after a couple of brewskies at the bowling alley lounge:
Dinner Time
"Are you my angel?" ~ Allen Ginsberg
Are you my Allen Ginsberg? The Jew
I can take home to a Mennonite dinner
of sausages and borscht for the purpose
of taunting my Nazi grampa? Will you flaunt
your Star-of-David jewelry, pull down your linen
pants after dessert and grin over the birthday
cake? He'd come after you with the iced pasca
bread and try to scratch away your circumcised
erection; there would be shouts behind the wine
glasses and in his study the paperback copy
of "Mein Kampf," which I read in grade school,
would leap off the shelf and slobber at the locked door.
Are you mine? Thick black glasses and light brown
skin, drooling over teenage boys in the supermarket
and marrying me for my intellect? Will you grow
a beard and write manifestos with a quilled
pen, engineer your arrests, gloat over your censored
essays and run naked through the tenements?
Are we here in this un-sexed bed with dirty
sheets, candles on the matching bedside tables,
cock-and-ball fantasies shadowy by the window?
Using each other for good reasons, our manuscripts
scattered on the grey carpet like infidelity in the morning?
Imagine the indignation!
Grampa with his blonde eyes, my neo brothers suspicious
behind their plates of ice cream, Mum and Gramma beautiful
and silent.
(c) copyright Joy Waller 2004
Haiku for my Muses
You write about dirt
instead of flowers.
I love you.
(c) copyright Joy Waller 2004
Oh, the intricacies of life on Earth!
Right now what I need is a hike through an olive grove, wine distilled in a pyramid, and jazz that will somehow compose itself in my skin and float out through my pores like lemon zest.
What is lemon zest, by the way? Several recipes I've been considering call for this ingredient, and I don't know if it's simple lemon juice, or something more magical and unattainable.
Steph lent me a yoga video so I did a 20-minute "p.m." workout yesterday and felt more relaxed than I have since childhood. The only problem was the good feeling disappeared in around an hour, so I nearly did it again, but was terrified of being trapped in a world where I did 20-minute p.m. yoga workouts for the rest of my life, unable to quit, unable to sleep or eat, enslaved forever on a large bath towel on the living room floor.
Crikey. In the midst of watching "Short Cuts," dir. Robert Altman, based on the short stories of Raymond Carver. The film has an ensemble cast including Lili Taylor, Julianne Moore, Tom Waits, Robert Downey Jr., Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tim Robbins, Sean Penn's brother (what is that guy's name?), Frances McDormand, others .... It's such a gritty movie based on such gritty writing - flop-houses and Jack Daniels and crooked cops and the like. Makes me want to get hammered and write behind a dumpster. In garish make-up. I think if Robert Downey Jr. and I met we would be friends. I mentioned this to Matt and backed it up with something like, "He was in rehab not for something trendy such as cocaine but for good ol' fashioned booze, which must be admired, and I think I'll wind up in rehab one day." Matt became upset and said not to joke about such shit and then we cheers'd (gin and vanilla vodka) and in the film Tom Waits cried in a diner.
Am drunk. Did I mention? Gin and mango extract and tropical peach juice.
Again, I have reached the three-day mark. I'm so upset with myself for having to start over again after Friday, but whatever. I'm less twitchy and more mournful this time around; all I want to do is sleep because when I'm asleep I don't crave. Went for a short roller blade ride yesterday - first in over a year. Super-fun! I forgot how much I loved it. I'll have to go on the Galloping Goose this weekend.
Last night Matt and I went to Sketch Park besdie Wellburn's and sipped Pilsner tallies out of wrinkled paper bags. Talked about childhood and transportation and addiction and beauty and literature. I read Joyce Carol Oates before bed, which was a terrible mistake - she always puts me in a mildly suicidal mood. Why is she so talented and depressed and beautiful? Why? Why? Why can't she write about happy people? America I used to be a communist!!
Who would play you in the movie about your life?
For me it would be Sarah Polley. Lauren Ambrose close second.
The reading last night was cozy, intimate, and rather inspiring. Matt, Steph, Ben, Colin, Miguel, and Jason read, and they all have such distinctive styles and voices and strengths that it's a little awe-inspiring to hear them all in one place. We sold about ten or twelve copies of Apparatus, I drank a "green-white fusion" tea, and did not smoke.
I have now officially seen the oddest movie in the world. Step down, "Cannibal! The Musical," and make way for "Shaolin Soccer." A kung-fu flick mixed with a cheezy pro-Communist message, gratuitous violence, brazen humour and a tragic love story, it was both painful and refreshing to watch. Demons fly out of soccer balls and such. Morgan has to see it.
Gah!
Gah!
I cheated - 5 cigarettes, but the rest have been snapped into the toilet and flushed.
You should see what I look like right now. Snarled, curly hair and big sad bloodshot blue eyes and wrinkled clothes and a headache that pounds straight out my forehead and into mirrors.
A public, drunken row with my man last night - my God I am trailer trash - followed by me stumbling down Pandora Avenue crying my eyes out - I only ever cry on Pandora; none of the other streets - before blowing $25 on a hostel bed and crashing there with my sheets folded neatly on my stomach. I knew something like this would happen. Nicotine does something to your blood that raises your alcohol tolerance and when you go off it you get drunk and mean faster that you could ever imagine. Angry writing and make-up sex have taken place - next is a shower and breakfast. I am hosting a reading tonight. I've got to get my act together.
No cigarettes in three days. I'm starting to get twitchy and irritable. Little things are setting me off, and it's only a matter of time before I snap and get drunk (4 hours, in fact - I'll be at Felicita's after seeing "The Delicate Art of Parking" at CineCenta). The cravings are less intense than the first time I quit, about 3 years ago - I remember a lot of pacing and long, angry walks and tearful calls to my mother, who smoked for 7 years herself, demanding, "When do they end? When do they end?" and her trying to say, as gently as possible, that cravings never DO end, really. They're with you for life.
People say quitting smoking is harder than quitting H, and I don't know if I'd go so far as to say that, but I'm feeling obsessive and ravenous. So far I've been good and bingeing mostly on salad; last time there were a lot of fries and burritos, and I gained 5 pounds in about a week.
I can't believe it. Svend Robinson's defence lawyer is actually named Michael Bolton! ("But ... But, I hate all his songs ...")
I have now been smoke-free for 19 hours! I'm getting all high on the extra oxygen and extra coffee and random-good thoughts. Also, the year-long headache is gone, already!
Marched in the Gay Pride parade on Sunday ... What madness-fun! Normally I am terrified of parades but I like the Pride one cuz everyone's costumes are so groovy and tall men prance effortlessly in six-inch spike heels (on grass!) and all the dogs have rainbow flags tied around them and instead of throwing candy to the onlookers it is condoms that are thrown (size extra-large, of course). I kept shouting "Yay for Gay!" and smoking and waving when people cheered as our group (UVic Pride/UVSS) walked by.
At Fisherman's Wharf afterwards I bought a vegi dog which I'm quite sure wasn't vegi. Or maybe they simply cooked it on the same grill as the real hot dogs; at any rate, I was screaming, "It tastes like a real hot dog! It tastes like a real hot dog!" and Jess was getting annoyed and saying, "I thought it was supposed to taste like a real hot dog," and then I went home and vomited violently and felt sick for two hours.
Sushi and vegetable tempura with Matt's fam afterwards made everything better.
Sunday was a mighty potluck/piss-up in honour of Matt's birthday, with things like mushroom strogonoff and yam balls and potato salad and minty chocolate cake and thabouli (sp?) and pita with houmus and pasta and pizza and spinach-asparagus-chickpea salad. Semi-Louise played a couple songs on the patio and there were candles and rye whisky and tons of beer and poker and hugs. A good evening.
Questions from Canada Day:
1) Why did I walk all the way to Oak Bay for beer? (I don't regret this.) Also, while in Oak Bay, why did I walk down the driveway of my old house and stare through the window at the current tenants? (I don't regret this.)
2) Why, when a girl complimented me on dressing in a patriotic way, did I freak out and shout, "The checks are ORANGE and white! ORANGE and white!" ? (actually I know why)
3) Why did I throw a hissy fit and run to the gully and lie down by the river and listen to the fireworks all by myself?
4) How did I manage to climb into a shopping cart at 1 a.m. while wearing a short skirt?
Things that Make me Insanely Irritable:
1) The current "fashion" of wearing those stupid ruffled mini-skirts.
2) Running out of cigarettes in the morning.
3) Being hungover in the early-evening.
4) Missing Russ's play like five times now.
5) My friends being waitlisted for third-year required classes.
6) Any and all American tourists.
7) People in the neighbouring house shouting and swearing at 8 in the a.m.
8) Phone calls from people I don't want to talk to.
9) Sambuca crying and looking desperate and abused when I have no idea what she needs or wants.
Things that make me Happy:
1) sushi
2) coffee
3) Matt
4) my bookstore job
5) Apparatus
6) gin
7) gossiping about people I don't like
8) good fiction
Most of my life plans are stipulated by the phrase "after Japan," and I have a new one to add to the list: after Japan, I'm joining the federal NDP party and will attempt to run as an MP. Politics were always heavily discussed in my childhood home, and at the age of 8 or so I had a scrapbook of political cartoons and would engage in stormy debates with my mother and grandfather about the state of our nation. One of the more vivid memories in my childhood was the day Mike Harcourt was elected as premier of BC (ironically, he was NDP, but we won't get into that). Our whole family was in the living room watching the elction coverage and when the votes were finalized my mother actually started to scream and cry. My dad said, "It's okay, it's okay; we can always move to Alberta," and I mailed Mike Harcourt a Gideon edition New Testament, hoping it would stop his evil ways. I never received a response.
Being an MP doesn't sound terribly exciting: it strikes me as a draining sort of job; rather thank-less, and filled with compromise and deceit and facade. It's not that I want to do it so much as I feel a responsibilty. I think I could do quite well as I'm female, young, outspoken, and working-class - and lets face it, if I ever became prime minister, international diplomatic fashion would take a turn for the marvelous!
Canada Day. Two six-packs of beer. A meadow. A faux-barbecue. A swimming pool. Fried potatoes. Mystery Science Theatre 3000. A round of "Oh Canada" at midnight, initiated by an American. A cute girl hitting on me. A cuter boy going to bed with me. Waking up in a strange house, 2 hours before work, in a wrinkled sun-dress while it drizzled rain outside.
Happy Canada Day! Let's all celebrate the anniversary of the official theft of the land from Aboriginal peoples.
Fifteen minutes ago I was having a cigarette and a coffee on the patio when these piercing screams erupted from a block over. A man kept shrieking "Help! Help! Help!" and crying and moaning. I'm assuming it was a junky coming down, as the screams didn't deviate in intensity and there were no other voices. I didn't know how to help him. I stared at Pandora Avenue, unable to see him, horrified, until the screams stopped.
